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What do Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have in common? Cybersecurity chops

With Sen Kamala Harris (D-CA) joining the field of 2020 hopefuls, all Democratic senators now running for president have pushed for major cyber policy reforms -- from cracking down on election interference to stemming the flood of data breaches. Sen Harris was a co-sponsor of the Secure Elections Act (S 2261) while Sen Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) backed a separate bill that would have launched a 9/11 Commission-style investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), meanwhile, introduced legislation, the Data Breach Prevention and Compensation Act (S 2289), in the wake of the massive Equifax data breach to ratchet up consequences for credit ratings agencies that fail to protect people’s data.

In the 2020 election cycle, cybersecurity could prove an important issue to the Democratic base: Democrats are both more concerned about election security and more skeptical of the government’s ability to manage a major cyberattack than Republicans, according to recent public opinion polls. And the 2020 candidates entering the race with lengthy cyber policy records have the potential to be judged on their accomplishments on this complex topic -- and are likely to face tough questions about Russian hacking and disinformation operations, election security and Chinese intellectual property theft.